flowers and favours....

Make a note of the date...mark it in your diaries....the sun is shining!!

I have even taken photos for tomorrow..ha!! How organised am I???? I made two more hexagon pieces for the books last night and had to share with you how good they all look together...in fact my brain is telling me that this kind of thing would make a very nice toe wrap...do I need three?? Probably not. Do I have time to make a zillion one inch hexagons? Probably not? Do I care that I don't have time? Probably not.

(just a note...the blue that you may be able to see on the white piece is tailors chalk, on the reverse. Not visible under normal light. I haven't taken to drawing on my stuff, not yet)

and as promised, wedding favours...These are a suprise for the bride and groom that's why I'm not showing the whole label. They don't read my blog but you never know....

Now a word about todays photos....are they o.k?? I quite like them but my photo editing programme decided to change it's settings overnight and has kind of taken on a mind of it's own. The things I would normally do to my pictures seem to just happen as if by magic but not necessarily in the way I would do them. The top two for example have a much greater colour saturation, nothing to do with me honest, it's magic I tell you, magic.

dotty loops.....

It's been a busy old day so far. Big supermarket shop stocking up for the two hungry men in my life and a few scraps for little old me, well a big jar of coffee actually and a packet of mints.....and why does it take an age to put it all away???? Marathon running, ha, don't make me laugh. Just put away a weeks worth of groceries and there's your exercise! Anyway, yet again I digress, babbling on about stuff that has no relevance to embroidery and probably bores you witless.

I had favours damp stretching last night so what to do?? I still have a lot of computer stuff to do but that never gets done after 7pm, my brain doesn't function past then. I know I thought, pin together another piece for toe wrap two and put rouleau loops in there.....

I have a feeling that this piece will ''change'' the overall appearance of the next toe wrap. For the first time I have used quite a big piece of the cotton lawn, as opposed to small pieces peeking through cutwork holes. The colour is quite different too, especially from the red and white stripes. I don't think this is a bad thing and I'm confident it will all blend together seamlessly...(said with my fingers and toes crossed and a lot of hope in my heart)

So far there is hardly any surface embroidery on here, maybe half a dozen french knots. Thing is I really MUST get on with all this secret stuff, the secret stuff that doesn't have to be a secret I'm just not ready to share is all...don't want to tempt any misadventure you know how it is.

Mind you, thinking about it, I am backing favours on the sewing machine tomorrow, I am tapping on here for the rest of this afternoon so who knows, I may embellish a little tonight, hmm, yes, maybe....

from little acorns...

Embroidering ''little things'' for the new sketchbooks last night. Then I thought about how these would go so well with this. There is another idea brewing but it will have to stay in my head for now, so much to do at the moment. They do go so well together though don't they?

Not much to show there Karen for a saturday night party you may be thinking...well this isn't it. I also made four of the new batch of wedding favours. When I say made I mean embroidered the fronts. I can't complete them until my labels arrive but still, four favours, two flowers, more of a result than a raging hangover and too little sleep!! It's dullsville her today though and I refuse to show them in shoddy light, you will have to wait for the sunshine....

Adorable Lydia.....

Today has been a good day. There have been so many cuddles and kisses going on in this house. How beautiful is Lydia and here she is with my own little baby......despite what anyone says he will always be my little baby! Lydia came with her daddy and her nanna to collect wedding favours for her uncle. I breathed a huge sigh of relief that they were o.k. met requirements and were taken from my custody for someone else to worry about!! In the absence of paper bags and gaffer tape I managed to cobble together some kind of wrapping mechanism and here they are, safe and sound. Just as a little tease for you and also to prove there is white going on around here, in the second picture you can just see a sneaky peek of my private thingy that's going on too.

When I was making the small favours I was also working on secret favours. The groom asked me to make bigger, different favours for his mum and the brides mum. I couldn't show them before but I think we are safe now. The second picture is of the favours both mothers will get on the wedding day (back to front pictures again, sorry!!) The first picture, well..... being a sucker for heirlooms and such I decided that I would make 2 extra cushions and give them to my aunt for safe keeping as keepsakes for any children that the happy couple may evenually have. So there are two of each of these, four extra in total even though only two are shown here. I hope you get that because even I am confused!!

It's a good feeling to have this task finished. Good in the sense that everyone is happy and I will let you know after the wedding what the other guests thought of them. This particular wedding day is going to be a little tense I can tell!! What will I do if somebody spills soup on one!! Maybe I shouldn't go.....

When I come back I will tell you who has been unlucky enough to win a srappy bit of silk scrim.........see you soon.

white silk and love hearts...

It really is such a pleasure making these little cushions. I have been cutting, tacking, adding labels, stuffing and hand sewing edges all weekend. Not as many as I would have hoped I have actually felt lousy since friday. Aching all over and really congested but this can in no way be described as a taxing or strenuous pastime, so delicate and pretty. Today I feel much better so perhaps the cure for all ills is surrounding yourself with embroidered silk!!

I think I have 20 finished completely, the remainder are backed and just need stuffing and the edges hand sewn to complete them. Don't the labels look good? They were custom made for me by the extremely talented Anna, check out her blog. Mind you, if you go there you will probably never come back here it is so beautiful!!

I am going to leave these for a day or so now, my throw is calling me. It is ready for another section so I need to give some thought to that and then gather my cloth together.

In other news......there isn't any. I wish I had something exciting to tell you but I fear not! As you know I don't get out much but I have been to the shed several times....

busy......

There's been progress in a few departments chez moi this week. First my throw, I have added some holes, yes holes!! and some applique with a lovely gingham I bought in Sweden to the latest section. I found it hard to photograph this section on its own so what to do? Safety pins and a little fiddling later all the pieces were joined, after a fashion, to give an impression of how it may look when it's finished. I suppose it won't look at all like this when it's finished though, no safety pins for a start. Anyway you know what I mean, use your imagination, mentally remove the safety pins and hey presto! Then again I may not arrange it like this at all so I guess I should say that I am showing here what it won't look like when it's finished...told you I had qualifications in drivel Mary Ann!!

I look at the hexagon piece daily, a squillion times a day in fact, and it still makes my heart flutter I love it so much, no, I adore it. Wouldn't it be lovely if I had a spare 3 months to just make a blanket of one inch hexagons? Now there's a thought. Anyway I digress......what else has been going on here? Sampling has started for my new venture. I would love to show you and in a few days I may try and be clever with my camera to get a few tiny glimpses on here that wouldn't give too much away. Sorry for all the secrecy but at the moment I am reliably informed that it can't be in the public domain, if that changes you will be the first to know. As for wedding favours, ah wedding favours, nearly there, last lap and hopefully able to show you the finished article within the week. There is another family wedding approaching and if you come a bit closer I will whisper to you......invitations.....now that my friends is very scary......

wedding favours....

Only four pictures for you today but never fear because I can assure you that you will be sick of these before I've finished! Wedding favours that started out as a request for 36 then jumped up to 41 and now stands at 50. They're for my cousin who is getting married on November 20th. When I was asked yesterday to increase the amount to 50 I said yes of course, swiftly followed by ''and I'm not answering the phone to you again before November 19th''.! In all seriousness though I really don't mind, family, don't you just love them.

As for the colour choice, I am reliably informed that it matches the bridesmaids dresses. I received a beatiful, if tiny, Pantone colour swatch all the way from New York if you please!! Very posh indeed! These will eventually become tiny cushions, silk dupion, hand embroidered in this colour matched silk thread with hand made labels showing the name of bride and groom along with the wedding date. I will of course show you when they are finished but as yet the labels are not ready so it will definitely be when I come back from my holidays. Two of the fifty will also be unique. They are for two special guests who must remain nameless but I have started those and may be able to show you some of that tomorrow.
In the meantime I am racking my brains trying to think of what I can make alongside these and then you won't have to look at the same thing every day for the next month!! Wish me luck....